I ,. .:,:'.... ',.",. ""':i\"'tf\",f":.f",..".:,.:.,.. ,,"'i,,':,i,.. ,\..'.,:,\t? jj ...: :::: :r:, : : :::;. : :::;:: :t:: :: : : :*: ::::;:::;;:: :: :: ::;:::;;: .:.;.. ".....:"', :.' ;." ":: ,,:": .:...:. ::...::::::....;:...:.: . .;?:::.:::..:;.:5:.::::::::::;;: :: :':=:.:::0::: ;::":::;: ;.' '" 'ot .... , . . . ' "_ <JI' . " " J; _ ' , . ,. ' ' : , ' ,; : . r : . '" - .""'''''' ':. [ . ' . .. : , .:. 4:. ;iF' t;: , ... t.i g.:.Ü:; ::'L }..; Ji.... ..' '.o. .:...:.-:'x.,:_ ".::':..:.,:.. .:....::.._ J: .". .. v ;':."w . ( :. . . :." .:..:?:=:: :::::.::.,:: .:.".:- ;' ....;:.....::: .. (T -,...::.;;;:::,..): ß;.' ;,';:C" :. (.:.; ',;.: ì""" ...... . :\'0.' ' Tt . .... " Atlantic Three is now open and ready for immediate occupancy, with spectacular views you can enjoy today, at prices that could be gone tomorrow. Luxury residences from S500,000s - $800,000s. 21050 Point place, Suite 1002, Aventura, FL 33180 Telephone: (305) 935.8000 Fax: (305) 935-1725 www.thepointofaventura.com Vúid where prohibited by law. indOOIl1Q New \'011( ATLANTIC Ti H R F-F- L:1 Ii LLII1 AT THE POINT OF AVENTURA - Another Distinctive (IJ S ( R "i Creation it's the new ear time to weight www.dukedietcenter.org START THE NEW YEAR with a visit to the Duke Diet & Fitness Center - a place to help you learn how to control your weight and develop a healthier lifestyle. Our medically supervised program is one of the most successful in the field with more than 40% of our clients keeping the weight off for more than five years. For more information on how the Duke Diet & Fitness Center can help you make changes in your life, call 1-800-235-3853. U I Duke Diet and Fitness Center DUKE UNIVERSITY HEALTH SYSTEM -t ) ;ftrlr @ - ,. , ; , U J æ t ,.'::'. '\: t"t,%",. ; ,. ^' x I.. __' ; 1 ({ ' .}.- . . . <^ ( r . 5 ,:., : ' I r. : ' " , '=- f "">/- P1 r/ , /' / ' Ji P keJ Books A VIACO..... CO.....PAHV . www.SimonSoys.com f V' ghe reader's guide to laughter. THE NEW YOI\KEI\ BOOK OF LITERARY CAR TOONS EDITED BY ßOB MANKOFF AVAILABLE IN HARDCOVER AT BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE 218 THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 19 & 26, 2001 ";X% terms like "closure" and "paradigm" and, better yet, "paradigmatic narratives." Her scope of reference and the number of her plot summaries show a gluttonous ap- petite for reading. A multilingual Euro- era Brit, she is at home not only with the French theorists but with Italian philosophers of the tale such as Roberto Calasso and Italo Calvino; she responds to "a general European interest in story- telling, and in thinking about story- telling." She cites admiringly the Aus- trian Christoph Ransmayr, the Basque Bernardo Atxaga, the Danish Karen Blixen, the Dutch Cees Nooteboom, the British immigrant (from Germany) W. G. Sebald. Self-conscious, eclectic literariness is the hallmark of postmod- ernism, and she pays tribute to Calvino and Borges, and to the icy, glassy fairy tales that entranced her girlhood. The texture of her own writing has the sera- glio opulence, the feeling of a flat design luxuriantly filled, to be found at the op- posite end of Europe, in the work of the Turkish Orhan Pamuk. Byatt is a writer actively searching for sources of energy outside the comfort zone of British so- cial fiction. "European storytelling," she writes, "derives great energy from arti- fice, constraints, and patterning." Of tw'O works of her own, she allows: ?;'S ".-, [ like the formal energy of the relations between Sweden borg's Divine Human and Hallam's insatiable love of God in The Con- jugial Angel, and the personifications in Mor- pho Eugenia-Venus, Ant Queen, Dame Kind, Matilda. The categorizations of pre-modem, pre- quantum science and religion excite her, and a reader of her fiction must be pre- pared to share this somewhat pedantic excitement. B yatt's Oxford lecture, "True Stories and the Facts in Fiction," was deliv- ered shortly after she completed her tw'O dense and delicious novellas, "The Con- jugial Angel" and "Morpho Eugenia" (published together, as ' gels and In- sects," in 1992), and tells us a good deal about her method of courting inspira- tion Both novellas had their roots in courses she was teaching in the English department of University College, Lon- don-the former in a lecture she "used to give on the presence of Arthur Henry I Hallam in Tennyson's In Memoriam,"